SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates

by John Maddox Roberts

  It was arranged in an irregular quadrangle, surrounded by tile-roofed stoas supported by gleaming white pillars, their rear walls decorated with beautiful paintings of historical and mythological subjects. In the shade of the stoas, small merchants offered their wares while farmers sold produce beneath colorful canopies scattered about the square.

  In the center of the square stood a wonderful marble statue of Aphrodite in the act of tying up her sandal. The white marble was so perfectly polished that it seemed transparent. Save for the hair, which was gilded, the statue was not tinted in the usual fashion; and I found this to be an improvement. Painting of statues is too often overdone, and the effect is garish. The people of Paphos, at least, had excellent taste.

  “May I interest you in a fine gown for your lady, Senator?” The voice belonged to a little, white-bearded fellow who looked Greek except for his pointed Phoenician cap. “These are of the finest silk, brought by camels all the long way from the land of the Seres, said to be produced in the mountain fastnesses of that land by giant spiders fed upon human flesh.”

  “I’ve heard it’s made by worms,” I said, feeling the weave of a Greek-style peplos. It was as smooth as water. Silk was still something of a rarity in Rome.

  He shrugged. “There are many stories. Nobody has ever seen the land of the Seres. What is undoubted is that it is the finest fabric on earth: stronger than a ship’s sail, light as a breath, so comfortable that a lady can go decently gowned from neck to toes and feel that she’s naked. They find this most stimulating.”

  “That’s the last thing my wife needs.” Something occurred to me. “Isn’t there some sort of Parthian monopoly on the silk trade these days?”

  “King Hyrodes claims that privilege, but the caravaneers are adept at avoiding his customs collectors. Just now the trade lanes are open, courtesy of your General Gabinius.”

  No doubt, I thought, a large piece of the trade stuck to his fingers, too. Gabinius had been quite successful in the East, although he had not gained the sort of renown that Caesar and Pompey had acquired; but our generals were accustomed to enriching themselves at the expense of the barbarians, and Gabinius had done well out of his proconsulship.

  I bade the silk merchant good-bye and continued my explorations. As one might expect in a sea-lanes emporium like Paphos, wares from the whole eastern sea were on display, some for domestic sale but most to attract other merchants who might buy in bulk for transshipment farther west. If a merchant had one fine glass vase on his table, he was sure to have a warehouse full of them down at the docks, ready to load up for you, cheap.

  I stopped in the Temple of Poseidon and made the promised sacrifice and admired the wonderful statue of that maritime god, executed by Praxiteles more than three hundred years before. In the great days of the Greek colonies, each city had competed with all the others to commission the finest sculptures and paintings from the greatest artists. Paphos, it seemed, had done especially well.

  “Where now?” Hermes asked, as we left the temple.

  “The naval docks. It’s time to act like an official.”

  The naval basin of Paphos lay to one side of the commercial harbor, just within the long breakwater built to protect the ships from the worst effects of storms. It was an artificial harbor forming a half circle lined with low-roofed stone sheds to accommodate thirty ships. Inside the sheds the floors sloped upward so that the ships could be floated in, their masts and oars removed, then hauled up out of the water for repairs: to have their bottoms scraped, tarred, and painted, or for other work. During the stormy season, the ships were stored in these sheds, high and dry.

  This facility turned out to be in the care of one Harmodias, a retired naval shipmaster who took his time about responding to my shouts and door pounding. His office was a little house situated among the warehouses for naval stores next to the sheds. He opened the door, blinking his one eye and scratching in his beard, wrapped in a moth-eaten garment that was also the blanket he had been sleeping in.

  “What’s all this racket?” he demanded, last night’s wine still strong on his breath.

  “I am Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger,” I announced grandly. “I bear a senatorial commission to scour this area for pirates.”

  He removed his hand from his beard and scratched his backside. “Well, good luck.” He walked to a small fountain that bubbled into a shell-shaped basin near his doorway and plunged his face into the water, shook his head and blew a while, then straightened, wiping his face with a corner of the disreputable robe.

  “I expect your cooperation,” I said.

  “If I had any to give, you’d be welcome to it,” he assured me. “But, as you can see, Roman naval power on Cyprus is diminished since its days of glory.”

  “I noticed. What happened to the ships?”

  He sat on a stone bench and worked his toes against the pavement as if they were numb. Clearly this man woke up a part at a time. “Well, let’s see. Five years ago I had ten fine triremes, ten Liburnians, and five penteconters, perfectly immaculate and with all their gear. Then General Crassus wanted them for his Parthian war. After that, General Gabinius wanted them for his campaigns in Syria and Egypt. Last year, General Pompey requisitioned them and sent them out to support General Caesar’s war in Gaul. That’s where they are now, if they’re still afloat.”

  “Generals put a high demand on Rome’s military resources,” I commiserated.

  “You’ve got that right. When I first went to sea, it was admirals used the ships for sea battles. Now all the navy does is ferry supplies for the legions, get them across water obstacles, run errands for them, anything but cruise and fight. It’s no work for a real sailor, I can tell you.”

  “Well, I’ve work for you now. I’m here with three ships—” He snorted loudly. “Ships! I saw them yesterday. Senator, your ships are cockleshells, and your crews are scum. Go sacrifice to Poseidon and ask him to keep a wide stretch of water between your little fleet and those pirates.”

  “I’ve already sacrificed. I asked for good cruising weather, and Neptune is cooperating so far. I’ll be needing arms and provisions, so if you’ll kindly unlock your storehouses I will inspect what you have.”

  “That won’t take long,” he grumbled, getting up and lurching back into his house. He returned with a ring of massive, iron keys. He had straightened his clothing somewhat and now wore a patch over the ruin of his left eye. Fully awake and walking steadily, he looked more like my idea of an old salt relegated by age to shore duty.

  “As you might imagine,” he said, as he strolled toward the smallest of the storehouses, “our squabbling generals got most of the stores as well. I didn’t want to be totally stripped, so I hid some of my stores on a farm inland. That way I’d have a little something should we have to deal with an emergency.”

  He twisted a key in one of the large, double doors and tugged it open. “I mean, if you have to, you can press a merchantman into service, even build a serviceable ship in a few days out of green wood if you’ve the carpenters for it. But try to come up with one of these on short notice.” He slapped a hand down on a massive bronze object that rested waist-high on wooden supports. It was molded in a rough semblance of Neptune’s trident, but it probably weighed four or five hundred pounds. It was a ship’s ram, and there were ten more like it, each of a different shape: boar’s head, eagle, thunderbolt, crocodile, and so forth, each of them capable of ripping a great hole in a ship’s hull and sending it to the bottom.

  “This is the arsenal. Shields are over there on that wall.” He pointed to a wall covered with perhaps two hundred shields. “They used to cover all the walls and the ceiling beams. Swords are on those racks in the back. Bows and arrows are stored in chests in the rear room, along with barrels of lead sling pellets.”

  “Catapults?” I asked. “Ballistae?”

  “Not a one. Gabinius got the last of them.” He shrugged. “Those things deteriorate fast in storage anyway. Best to build new
ones for each season’s fighting.”

  The next building held spars, masts, oars, and other woodwork; another held sails and awnings; another chains, ropes, and other cordage. The whole lot: arms, wood, cloth, rope, and iron work would have fit easily into one of the buildings and left plenty of room to spare.

  “What about provisions?” I asked, without much hope.

  “Not a bite. What the generals didn’t get, the mice did. Not so much as a sack of raisins left. I’ve plenty of good jars, but you’ll have to fill them with wine, water, oil, and vinegar yourself. There are plenty of ship’s victuallers in the town. I can tell you which of them are the least dishonest.”

  “I was afraid of this.” As I pondered my dismal situation, I noticed a small storehouse separated from the others by some distance. “What’s in there?”

  “Pitch, paint, and naptha,” Harmodias said. “That’s why it’s kept at a distance. One spark in there and the whole harbor could go up.”

  “Let’s have a look at it.”

  “Whatever you say, Senator.” We walked to the small storehouse. Like the others it was stoutly built of massive stone, roofed with red tiles, its small windows covered with bronze grates. Even before the Greek got the door open, I could smell the contents. Even the pungency of the pitch and paint was overwhelmed by the powerful odor of naptha.

  “Is the naptha for making fireballs?” I asked.

  “Right. That’s what these are for.” He walked past the huge jars to a wooden bin, reached in and pulled out something that looked like a wad of hair the size of a man’s head. “This is tight-packed tow, specially made in Egypt, where they grow all the flax. It’s already had a light soaking in pitch. Just before you row into a fight, you soak it in naptha, put it in the catapult basket, touch it with a torch, then let fly. It really blazes in the air, a very pretty sight. Hit your ship right, and you can set it ablaze from stem to stern.” He dropped the thing back in the bin, which held several thousand of them.

  “You’re fully supplied with these,” I observed, “and with naptha, to judge by the smell. Why didn’t Gabinius or one of the others take all this?”

  He grinned. “Lots of skippers won’t have the stuff on their ships,” he said. “Scared of it. They’d rather fight it out hand-to-hand than risk setting their own ships on fire.”

  I walked along the rows of huge jars. “They got most of the pitch, I see.” I paused among the jars of red and black paint, all of them full. “But they didn’t take the paint. Why is that?”

  “For all I know, Caesar wanted to paint ‘em green or yellow. They took what they wanted and left me what they didn’t. What I’ve got is at your disposal, Senator.”

  I walked out into the fresh air. “Well, it’s not much, but you’ve done well to keep what you have. Generals with imperial ambitions are like locusts. They devour everything in their path. My crews are skimpy. I’ll need to hire experienced men for this job. Have the generals swept up all of them as well?”

  “Sailors we have plenty of, Senator. If you like, I’ll pass the word and we can hold interviews right here. If you’ll allow me to advise you, I’ll know which are the real sailormen and which are idlers.”

  “That will be most helpful. I would like to begin tomorrow.” “You don’t waste time.”

  “While we’ve been talking, a ship has been plundered or a coastal village attacked. I intend to put a stop to it.”

  “They’ll be here at sunup, Senator.”

  “I’ll be here a good deal after sunup,” I told him, “but a little waiting won’t hurt them.” I took a look around, noted a long, low stone shed near the water, and pointed to it. “I take it that is the slave barracks. You should have a staff of more than a hundred public slaves. Where are they?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “They went along with the fleet.”

  “Needed for maintenance and general labor, I was told. I’m supposed to get them back when the ships are returned. I’m not wagering my savings on it.”

  “I’ll find skilled carpenters and at least one good smith in the city and send them here to build us some catapults. Can you direct them in the manufacture?”

  “Easily. Get us some seasoned hardwood and the best cordage you can find. Weak rope is no good for ballistas.”

  I took my leave of him and turned my steps toward the waterfront. It was lunchtime, and I found a small tavern with tables in front beneath a grape arbor. Seated and starting on my first cup of wine, I said, “I can tell you’re bursting to say something, Hermes. What is it?”

  “No rations,” he began, “no wine, no oil, not a single sack of dates or wheel of cheese. He hid arms and supplies, why not that? I’ll tell you why: he sold it! As soon as Pompey’s men were gone, every bite and sip of those provisions were in the market here and he’s been getting drunk on the proceeds ever since. He’s a rogue, and you shouldn’t trust him.”

  “In all probability you are right,” I told him. “But when generals and proconsuls act like thieves, why should we expect a low-level functionary to act any better? And he kept back something. It takes courage to keep something from the likes of Gabinius.”

  “If those storehouses had been completely empty, he’d have lost his job,” Hermes groused, “so he had to keep something in them. Besides, he’s a Greek.”

  “What else are we going to find in these waters? Until something better comes along, I’ll put up with him, and don’t you give him any of your insolence either—even if he is a Greek.”

  For a while I admired the sight of ships entering and leaving the harbor, which afforded a fine spectacle. The usual practice was to sail right up to the breakwater, then lower sails and run out the oars. The procedure was reversed when leaving. Unlike warships, which unvaryingly carried a single mast bearing a single, rectangular sail, merchant vessels often had two or even three masts and multiple sail plans. Where Roman warships were usually painted red and black, these were painted in a rainbow of colors, with fanciful bow and sternposts, the banners of many merchant companies and the protective devices of numerous gods.

  “Look at that!” Hermes said. He pointed to where a sleek little vessel was raising its sail even though it was still within the harbor. It took me a moment to see what had surprised him so. The sail was bordered with purple. Not the cheap off-crimson tint that sometimes passes for purple, but the genuine Tyrian. It was an immense extravagance.

  “That has to be Cleopatra’s yacht,” I said. “She must be aboard, drilling her crew. I fear that I’ll regret allowing her to come along.” I pondered the sight for a while. “She must have risen in her father’s affections if he’s allowed her a purple-bordered sail.”

  “I hear he’s executed two of her sisters,” Hermes said. “Maybe he values the children he has left all the more.”

  For the next hour, while we ate, Cleopatra’s yacht maneuvered around the harbor, under sail and under oars, rehearsing all the actions of a naval battle and no doubt terrifying all the merchant skippers, some of whom almost suffered ramming. But the little ship was expertly rowed, its oars polished to such whiteness that they resembled ivory, flashing like wings as it darted about, nimble as a dragonfly.

  “She’s going to take some restraining when we sight real pirates,” Hermes observed.

  “All too true,” I agreed. “In war there’s nothing as dangerous as an enthusiastic amateur.”

  After lunch I called on the harbor master, a busy official named Orchus.

  “How may I be of sendee, Senator?” His clothing was rich, his beard neatly curled and dressed with scented oil, an Oriental affectation coming into esteem in the eastern parts of the Greek world.

  “From now on,” I told him, “I want you to question the master of every incoming ship about acts of piracy in these waters: locations, dates, description of what goods or persons were stolen, and so forth. Have your secretary write up a daily report and deliver it to me at the house of Silvanus.”

  “It will be my plea
sure to carry out your instructions,” he said, “but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the reports.”

  “You think the skippers would lie about this?”

  “And why not? If a merchant captain is offered a cargo of fine wine at one third its market value, he will accept it and is not likely to speculate about its origin. On the contrary, he will sacrifice to Hermes in gratitude for this stroke of luck and will pray to encounter more of the same.” Hermes is the god of thieves.

  “But don’t these merchants find it to be in their interest that Rome should scour pirates from the sea? Do the pirates not regard all shipping as prey?”

  “Not always. They make certain not to alienate everyone. After all, they must sell their plunder somewhere.”

  “What about the captives? Surely they can report the sacking of their own towns.”

  “Here on Cyprus we do not deal in slaves. Almost all such are taken to the great market on Delos—if, that is, they cannot raise a ransom.”

  “This is scandalous,” I said.

  “Decidedly. It is also a tradition many centuries old, one with which Rome does not interfere, I might add. Rome needs slaves, too. And I am told the pirates are careful not to victimize Roman citizens.”

  “A sound policy. That was the sort of behavior that caused their downfall years ago. Well, get what you can out of them and send your reports on to me. I expect to be at sea a lot, but I’ll send someone to pick up the reports at regular intervals.”

  “It shall be done.”

  “Let’s go inspect our ships,” I told Hermes. “Haven’t we had enough of them for a while?” “I just want to see if Ion has sold them for firewood.” We found the ships hauled up onto a convenient stretch of sandy beach. The masts, sails, and oars were neatly laid out; the hulls propped up with timber balks; the sailors busily at work scraping the bottoms. Whatever his shortcomings, Ion was a thoroughgoing professional when it came to his vessels.